It’s always been terrible even when it was new, nothing’s changed it’s lazy, but the problem is there are almost as many different pieces of arcade hardware as there are games. Go dedicated emulator when you can Mame when you can’t.

It’s not the greatest but, Mame is a Good emulator that plays countless games very well. And when it comes to programs that try to be a jack-of-all-trades? It’s easily the among the best in that regard.

It’s not the greatest but, Mame is a Good emulator that plays countless games very well. And when it comes to programs that try to be a jack-of-all-trades? It’s easily the among the best in that regard.

I don’t get Darksakul’s irrational hate-boner for it.

Well I just looked at the new FBA list. It supports a ton of games now. Hopefully better quality.

I actually hate Darksukul as a person he constantly trolls me, but I agree with him here, Mame is pretty shitty. Even something as popular and common as X-Men Arcade is not emulated properly- the music is FM only, the sampled lyrics don’t play or play very low, games have graphical issues or missing speech or sound errors, last time I messed with Mame and to be fair this was 8-10 years ago, games have screen tearing and input lag as well. Some games run too fast some too slow, ugh.

Final Burn Alpha was way way way way way way way way better, but only did CPS1-3 and Neo Geo. Which you would expect, that’s 4 pieces of hardware vs 1,000 pieces of unique hardware. I’m sure Mame has gotten better but then again, model 1 emulation is still broken so who knows.

Some of us are just anal. It does play almost every arcade game and most well enough. But back in the day you would want to go with dedicated emulators whenever possible. Maybe things have changed?

What’s hyperspin? Is that any better than Mame? Or is it even an emulator, maybe just a front end (I think it’s ugly if it’s a front end).

Ok I often bitch about how the future sucks because there’s no anti gravity and we still use oil for cars and are ultimately doing nothing but fucking eating and in hampster cages for green paper to do these things. I’m a pessimist.

But I’ve got to say. The entire PS1 library can now fit on 1 512GB Micro SD card the size of my pinky nail. 1300+ games. Put that in your pipe and smoke that for a second.

I bet your could probably squeeze the Saturn and N64 onto that same card. Fuck me sideways…

Wait let’s expand on this. I just realized that gaming history from the Atari to the PlayStation/N64/Saturn era + all arcade games will fit on a single 512GB mini SD card, and run perfectly on a computer the size of a cell phone inside a tiny Sega Genesis shell LOL THE FUTURE IS NOW.

And just think, when the Pi 4 or 5 rolls around, and SD cards are packing 4TB, you could expand that to PS2/DC/XBOX/GC era, DS and Wii as well probably LOL. I’m just going to become this monk that roams the earth carrying videogame history in his pocket looking for random people to play and explain each game to them. This is going to be such a fun project and everything I need will cost less than 100$. Genesis USB hub=20, Pi3=35, SD card=40$.

I just downloaded a updated 32bit version of M.A.M.E. on a lark, see what changed.
They updated all their documents and copyrights as of this month. Whoopi doo…

But I don’t care about that, I care about the core programming and how M.A.M.E. does Arcade titles. I would test more, but I don’t feel like spending a few days re-downloading non-corrupted, unaltered Roms that are compatible with the current M.A.M.E. From what I found, old 70s up to mid 80s run fine. Nintendo VS system Roms are still way off, So is Neo Geo. Tetris Grand Master Challenge II Plus works like the real thing so thats a Bonus. But M.A.M.E. still has issue with Capcom, Konami, Neo Geo and the like. Turtles in Time still has issues where the M.A.M.E. TMNT Turtles in Time audio is worst than Higain Emulating the SNES version.
And the SNES version of the game has inferior sound and graphics to the Arcade.

They “updated” binaries and system files this last February, but its mostly to include more systems under it’s emulation Umbrella.
Instead of fixing issues with it’s spotty arcade emulation support they added shit electronic toys/handheld games and 80’s microcomputers like the Amiga. There are far better Amiga emulators than M.A.M.E.
Integrating the M.E.S.S. sister project into M.A.M.E. was a mistake, I don’t need M.A.M.E. to be a all in one stop. There are front enders which do a far better job of tying together different emulators under one UI.
99% of the people who download M.A.M.E. just want to play arcade games. The M.A.M.E. team needs to laser focus on their own specialty and not try to be a Jack-of-all-trades.
There are parts of M.A.M.E. that has not been updated (and needs to be updated) for 20 years now. Including it’s basic interface which was fine for DOS, but is shit in Windows.

Mame a good catch all for when their isn’t a dedicated Emulator, but for particular key systems like CPS1,2,3, Neo geo, Sega hardware, ect you are far better off with something else.

A good program to download is RetroArch, RetroArch in it self isn’t a emulator, its a frontend that use other emus as cores.

MAME has a heavy backend, try Retroarch’s NeoGeo and CPS2 cores. There are other cores as well, but those seem to run well. I was able to play those on the Wii despite all its memory access limitations.

I have very basic questions. Like how do I even get started? Is there even an operating system on it? Or am I gunna have to type commands and shit like it’s 1989 and ms dos lol.

All I’m using it for is emulators that’s all I care about, I have all the gear ordered (except the Sega Genesis case, fucking sold out everywhere they want 50$ now for it fuck that I’ll use a plastic shell or nothing).

Emulators and Kodi is what I want on it. Are there tutorials out there someone could link me to a good, super simple one for the things I wanna do?

Is there even an operating system on it? Or am I gunna have to type commands and shit like it’s 1989 and ms dos lol.

Nope.
Yup.
In that order.

You’ll need to download an OS, load it onto an SD card, and plug that in before you can use it.
Not sure if there’s any OS that fits this use that has a full GUI, but the last one I used was all command-line.

I have very basic questions. Like how do I even get started? Is there even an operating system on it? Or am I gunna have to type commands and shit like it’s 1989 and ms dos lol.

All I’m using it for is emulators that’s all I care about, I have all the gear ordered (except the Sega Genesis case, fucking sold out everywhere they want 50$ now for it fuck that I’ll use a plastic shell or nothing).

Emulators and Kodi is what I want on it. Are there tutorials out there someone could link me to a good, super simple one for the things I wanna do?

Alrighty. This is all crazy easy to set-up. Here’s everything you need to know:

Things you need:

RaspBerry Pi 3

Micro USB power cord brick

Decent case for your Pi 3

Decent sized Micro SD card. At least 16GB. But it can use 128GB.

USB gamepad of your choice.

HDMI cable obviously.

^^ Should cost you $60-$70 total. Here are some good links to what i recommend:

While your at it, various heatsinks for your Pi 3 available. I don’t think it really needs these, so long as the case you choose has good ventilation but, i put them on mine because anyway because they looked cool:

^^ The Raspberry Pi 3 itself has no built-in software. If you plug it in with nothing installed, it’ll just be a blank screen. Retropie is essentially your operating system for the Pi 3, stored on your Micro SD card which is basically the PI 3’s “Hard Drive”. All the emulators come pre-packed/installed with it.

Now before you plug everything in, for some HDTV and monitor types, Retropie has a quirk where it won’t want to output through HDMI. So once you are done installing the Retropie image, simply click on your micro SD card to inspect the installed contents, locate the “config” Text file. And add THIS into it:

hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1

^^ You can skip this step if you don’t run into this issue but, if you do, that is how it is fixed.

When finished, plug everything in, put Micro SD card into the PI3 and and turn it on.

Adding games:

Now the Retropie software is linux-based so it WILL NOT automatically display contents of the card when inserted into a PC or MAC. You cannot simply remove the card from your Pi 3, put it into your computer, and start adding Roms. It’s a tad more complicated than that but still easy.

Method 1):

USB method. Take a blank USB drive, create a yellow folder inside named Retropie and plug it into the Pi 3. The Pi 3 will create some folders inside. Unplug USB drive and plug it back into your computer. Now locate your Retropie file on the USB drive and click on it. Now you’ll see the folders for all the various emulators inside have been created. Locate the system you want, copy your games to it, unplug and plug USB drive back into the Pi 3, and it’ll automatically copy the games to the proper folder on your PI 3’s Micro SD card storage. This is the fastest method if you have many, large files to move over, like PSOne or Dreamcast games.

I actually just bought a cheap, long USB extension cable and keep that plugged into my Pi 3 at all times. Makes it easier to transfer stuff by USB whenever i want, and i don’t feel like i’m wearing out my Pi 3’s USB ports, by constantly plugging in/unplugging USB stick.

Method 2):

Good news is, because of the built-in WiFi on the PI 3, there is an even easier method to add games. By transferring wirelessly using an FTP manager like filzezilla, which is simple to set-up. Although not nearly as fast as the USB method for large files, this is still awesome because it makes adding/renaming/rearranging files very easy.

Tutorials:

Great channel here, i recommend subscribing to ETA Prime. Learned everything i know about the Raspberry Pi 3 and hacking the NES Classic from this guy.